白・Shiro

The snow wrapped around my knees like a firm brace. The blindingly bright sky and the alabaster tips of the trees blended together like the flavors of grandma’s home cooked stew. Thick pine wood trunks burst from the dense snowpack - the only evidence of the forest. A raging white wind, nigh strong enough to be a blizzard, howled like a banshee through thin openings between the trees.

The long troughs left in my wake quickly disappeared behind me, filling in with the bountiful flakes falling from the sky. It was imperative that I find my way free of the snowy maze that was the pinewoods, for escaping the icy corridors was my only hope of survival. Starvation, dehydration, fatigue, none of it would kill me. When my time comes, the thing that would kill me will be my own mind, for what truly stalks me is something that if seen, would melt my sanity like the snow in spring.

A choice given, in the end, I would die suffering a humane famine, but this was a wish made in vain. A suffering not even Satan would impose upon those within the Ninth Circle of Hell was just beyond the horizon. The sun fell from the sky and the stars climbed high, the winds faded but the howl remained. Forward the cries came, inching closer they approached. I blinked once and before I could run, the snow in front of me moved with malice.